Pentium 3 to 4 upgrade PCI detection problem

[xraytech]

I have software for an xray camera which autodetects a frame grabber card fine under Win98se on a Pentium 3 machine. However, when ported to a Pentium 4, the PCI autodetect fails and the card is not recognised. The new board is a d850GB Intel, but we have tried with several other Pentium 4 machines, all clean installs, and the same happens. We have stripped the systems as much as poss, and tried setting the interrupts manually via BIOS, and every other fix we can think of. The card is ok, and found by every other software except this one. Any offer on why PCI autodetect works on a P3 and fails on a P4 under win98se would be helpful. Thanks

 

[Zoron]

Is Windows 98 your only option? Is it possible for the card and software to function under XP at the very least? I'm willing to bet the issue is more with 98 than a P3 vs. a P4... the changes just aren't significant enough between those two processor types. The only possible difference I can think of is the PCI bus revision... but PCI 2.0 is supposed to be fully backwards compatible with older cards. If the software you're using is very old (even DOS based), then there is also a chance that the P4 is running too fast for the software. What kind of P4's are you trying this with? Socket 423, 478 or 775?

 

[xraytech]

Is Windows 98 your only option? Is it possible for the card and software to function under XP at the very least? I'm willing to bet the issue is more with 98 than a P3 vs. a P4... the changes just aren't significant enough between those two processor types. The only possible difference I can think of is the PCI bus revision... but PCI 2.0 is supposed to be fully backwards compatible with older cards. If the software you're using is very old (even DOS based), then there is also a chance that the P4 is running too fast for the software. What kind of P4's are you trying this with? Socket 423, 478 or 775?

Zoron, Ta for answer. We need 98se cause it is the best for running critical hardware, no background web dialling etc. We just traced the answer, which was a misplaced file probably involved in the PCI bus search for the PCI card. Your comment about speed is interesting. We have found some software not liking the last fast Pentiums. We thought problem was hardware PCI conflicts, but turns out is missing info on the software side, which cannot be distinguished easily. thanks for help

 

[Zoron]

There is a program available that will slow down the CPU for programs that require it... I don't remember the name off the top of my head though. Some old programs simply cannot deal with the speed of modern processors because they were designed with 286s, 386s, or 486s in mind. It's mostly DOS software that has the issue... I think most Windows programs run ok regardless of how fast the processor runs.